To:A. D. TSYURUPA[2]

Published:Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      pages535-542.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

NEW ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE WORK
		 OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS
	       AND THE COUNCIL OF LABOUR AND DEFENCE

January 24, 1922

ComradeTsyurupa,

Inconnection with our telephone conversation yesterday,
and your promise to observe a strict regime, we need to have
a detailed talk on the whole system of work, and to think it
over thoroughly.

Themost radical defect of the C.P.C. and the C.L.D.
is the absence of any checking-up on fulfilment.We are
being sucked downby the rotten bureaucratic swamp into
writing papers, jawing about decrees, drawing up decrees—
and in this sea of paper live work is being drowned.

Cleversaboteurs are deliberately luring us into this paper
swamp. Most of the People’s Commissars and other grandees
are, quite unconsciously, “sticking their heads into the
noose”.

Thestrict medical regime laid down for you must be usedat all coststo break away from turmoil and commotion,
commissions, talking and writing of papers—to break away,
tothink overthe system of work andradically reform it.

Thecentre of gravity of your activities must be just this
refashioning of our disgustingly bureaucratic way of work,
the struggle against bureaucracy and red tape,the
checking-up on fulfilment.

Thechecking-up on fulfilment, the checking-up on what
happens in practice—this is your main and principal task.You should set up for this a little staff (four–six persons)
of particularly tried and tested assistants (an office manager,
his assistants, a secretary and such like).

Forthis purpose, in my opinion, it is essential:

(1)torelieve theC.P.C.and theC.L.D.of unnecessary
burdens, transferring all petty questions to the Narrow
Council of People’s Commissars and the procedural meetings of
theC.L.D.

Thishas begun. But it will “come apart” in two weeks,
given our damned Oblomov ways, if it is not followed up,
chased up, checked up, flogged along with three knouts.

Theoffice manager must be taught (just as the
Secretariat of theC.P.C.and theC.L.D.should be)
to watch very
closely to see that petty questions are not brought before
the C.P.C. and the C.L.D., and that all questions in general
first go through a triple filter (an inquiry to the
appropriate People’s Commissariats; their urgent reply; the same
from the Codification Department, etc., etc.).

Youand
Gorbunov[1]must together work out writtenregulationsfor the bringing forward and consideration of
questions, and checknot less thanonce a month,you
personally, whether the regulations are being observed and
whether they are achieving their object, i.e., reduction of
paper work, red tape, more forethought, more sense of
responsibility on the part of the People’s Commissars,replacement of half-baked decrees by careful, prolonged,
businesslike checking-up on fulfilmentand bychecking of experience,
establishment of personal responsibility (in effect, we have
complete irresponsibility at the top, in the People’s
Commissariats and in their departments, and the saboteurs make
magnificent use of this: as a result we have an Oblomov
situation which wrecks all business).

Iknow that this isextraordinarilydifficult. But just
because it is difficult, you must devote yourselfentirelyto this matter.

(2)aminimum of sessions. The standard should be once
a week for the Council of People’s Commissars + once a week
for the Council of Labour and Defence, two hours each.

(3)TheSupreme Economic Commission. Close downallits subcommissions as rapidly as possible, and replace them
by demanding of the People’s Commissars that each of them
should haveresponsiblepeople to write drafts, that the
People’s Commissar should endorse them, and that he himself
should get them co-ordinated in thebriefestpossible time
with all “interested” People’s Commissars and at the C.L.D.
or the C.P.C.

TheSupreme Economic Commission should existonlyfor co-ordination (codification) and the most rapid checking
(stamping) by yourself plus Kamenev.

Onlyfor this.

Notfor talk.

Notfor discussion.

(4)Youare not to become a member of a single
commission, not one, except the Supreme Economic Commission.

(5)Tofight the outrageous abundance of commissions,
replacing them by a formal demand fora written opinionin
the shortest possible time.

(6)Youmust in this way set yourself free from commotion
and turmoil, which arekilling all of us, and make it possible
for you to think calmly about the workas a whole—

—andparticularly to concentrate on checking-up on
fulfilment, on fighting bureaucracy and red tape.

Ibeg you to think over this whole question, and to write
to me.

Withcommunist greetings,Lenin

A PROGRAMME FOR WORK ON NEW LINES

February 20

ComradeTsyurupa,

Moreon the subject of work on new lines.

Iwill try to formulate its programme in this way:

(1)theC.P.C. and the C.L.D. to be made ten times more
compact, in the sense that the People’s Commissars should
not dare to bring trivial matters before them, but should
decide them themselves andanswerfor them themselves;

(2)thestaff of the Managing Department of the C.P.C.
(at present three-quarters idle) should be made responsible
for this, for putting this into effect;

(3)thesame applies to the Narrow Council of People’s
Commissars, plus itsespecialreduction in size;

(4)someof the members of the Narrow Council and its
staff, and also the staff of the Managing Department of the
C.P.C., to be taken by you under your personal command in
order tocheck up on effective fulfilment(you instruct
so-and-so: take a journey down there, look, read, check up,
you will answer for any bungling through gullibility).

(5)You(and Rykov) must devotefirst and foremostone
hour, or if your health permits, two, every day, to
personal checking-up on the work: you summon to your office
(or visit) not grandees, but members of Collegiumsand
lower, practical workers of the People’s Commissariat of X,
Y, Z—and check up on their work, get down to rock-bottom,
school them, teach them, give them a proper trouncing.Study people, search forableworkers. This is now the essence;
all orders and decisions without this are dirty bits of
paper.

Replyto me. We shall think it over, consult with members
of the Central Committee, and as rapidly as possiblefixsuch a (or some other) programme.

Yours,Lenin

P.S.But Bryukhanov is not suitable. Someone else must
be found. For the time being you had better set up a “trio”
there, something pretty strong.

PROPOSAL FOR THE DRAFT DIRECTIVE
	   TO THE NARROW COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS

ComradeTsyurupa,

Isend yon my addition. My advice is to getbriefcomments
fromallPeople’s Commissars andallmembers of the Narrow
Council of People’s Commissars by Thursday.

Yours,Lenin

Aspecial supplementary decision should lay down:
The principal task of the Narrow Council of People’s
Commissars must be strict watchfulness that the People’s
Commissariats
(1) observe the laws,
(2) do not evade
responsibility by needlessly transferring a mass of unnecessary
questions to the Narrow Council for decision, but should
decide the questions themselves, on their own
responsibility or by agreement between two or more People’s
Commissariats under ordinary procedure;
(3) checking the legality,
expediency and rapidity of individual instructions and acts
of the People’s Commissariats; the struggle against
bureaucracy and red tape by such checking, and by persistent
reduction of the number of officials.

DRAFT DIRECTIVE REGARDING THE WORK
		 OF THE COUNCIL OF LABOUR AND DEFENCE,
		   THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS
		      AND ALSO THE NARROW COUNCIL
		      OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS

Thechief defect of these institutions is that they are
overburdened with trivial matters. As a result, they are
floundering in bureaucracy instead of fighting it.

Thecauses of this evil are:
(1) the weakness of the
Managing Department,
(2) the inability of the People’s Commissars
to climb out of the mire of trivialities arid bureaucratic
details,
(3) the desire of the People’s Commissars (and still
more that of their departmental bureaucrats who egg them
on) to shift responsibility on to the C.P.C.,
(4) last and most
important—the fact that responsible workers do not realise
that the order of the day now is to fight the sea of paper and
show distrust of it and of the eternal “reorganisations”,
that the first task of the moment is not decrees, not
reorganisations butselection of people;
establishment ofindividual
responsibility for what is being done; checking-up on work
actually performed. Otherwise we shall not climb out of the
bureaucracy and red tape which are throttling us.

TheNarrow Council of People’s Commissars, the C.L.D.
and the C.P.C. must go all out to get rid of trivialities,
teaching the People’s Commissariats to settle minor matters
themselves and to answer for them more strictly.

Thestaff of the Managing Department of the C.P.C. must
regard as its main task the practical realisation of thefollowing: to reduce the number of matters coming before the
Narrow C.P.C., the C.L.D. and the C.P.C., and to ensure that
the People’s Commissars (severally and jointly) should
decide more themselves and answer for it; to shift the centre
of gravity to checking up on effective fulfilment.

Forthe same purpose, the Deputy Chairmen of the C.P.C.,
Comrades Rykov and Tsyurupa, must go all out to free
themselves of trivial matters and commissions, fight against
attempts to drag them (the deputies) into matters which
should be settled by the People’s Commissars; devote two or
three hours a day, as a minimum, to making the personal
acquaintance of the responsible workers (not the grandees)
of the most important (and later, all) People’s
Commissariats, in order to check up and select people; make use of the
staff of the Managing Department of the C.P.C. and some
of the members of the Narrow Council, and also the Workers’
and Peasants’ Inspection, to check up on the work actually
done and what success it has had; in short, they should
become practical instructors in administrative work, such
as we lack most of all.

Distrustof decrees, of institutions, of “reorganisations”
and of grandees, especially among Communists; struggle
against the mire of bureaucracy and red tape by checking
up on people and on the actual work done; merciless
expulsion of unnecessary officials, reduction of staff, replacement
of Communists who don’t study the art of management
seriously—such must be the line of the People’s Commissars
and the C.P.C., of its Chairman and his Deputy Chairmen.

February 27

[1]+acodifier+1 from the Narrow Council of People’s Commissars—Lenin

[2]OnDecember 1, 1921, the Political Bureau of the C.C. of the
R.C.P.(B.), having heard Lenin’s report on the work of Tsyurupa,
endorsed his appointment as Second Deputy Chairman of the
Council of Labour and Defence. On December 5, by decision of the
Political Bureau Tsyurupa was appointed Deputy Chairman of
the Council of People’s Commissars.